I never liked the mattress analogy, because if gravity is the bending of the mattress, what is pulling the ball down the slope?
I never liked the mattress analogy, because if gravity is the bending of the mattress, what is pulling the ball down the slope?
It's just an analogy, you're not supposed to think too deeply about them.
The main take away for a lay person is that _like_ the mattress space is being deformed. That's where the analogy stops. Taking it further, like with all analogies, breaks the analogy.
If the analogy was a perfect one, then it would just be the reason and not an analogy.
My main gripe is how hard for most people it is to extrapolate that deformed mattress into a 3d space.